


The Size of the World (It's Smaller from Above)

by nonbinarycoded



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, if you read this as anything other than close siblings i'll kill you in real life, it looks like it's gonna be sad but i promise it isn't, my prompt was just 'please let vax be happy', set ambiguously between the chroma conclave and the final arc, that's only because vax is an emo fuck it's very sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 00:44:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13202073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinarycoded/pseuds/nonbinarycoded
Summary: Syngorn had always felt like a cage to Vax. Cramped and threatening, with the sense that there was an entire world outside that he was only allowed to see a small portion of. A bird cage that he and his sister were both shoved into.Looking back on it all, it was almost funny, in a bittersweet sort of way.Or, the one where Vax reflects on what it means to have been caged for so long when he's a free bird in every sense of the meaning now.





	The Size of the World (It's Smaller from Above)

**Author's Note:**

> I asked for prompts on Tumblr, and @jmonsaord sent me a message that just read, "hi my crit role prompt is vax and being happy," and honestly, I get that. I couldn't say no.

It’s ironic, in hindsight.

That’s really the only way Vax can think— in hindsight. When he and his friends are saving the fucking world, it’s the only way to think. If he’s not in the middle of a battle, if he’s not planning every move he and everyone else on the field are going to make sixteen steps ahead, then he’s only ever thinking in hindsight. What could he have changed? Done better? Not done at all?

The past is an odd string of puzzle pieces that are locked down the second they’re placed, and whether or not you place one that fits in line with what comes before it, it’s stuck where it is. And you can retrace the pieces back as far as you can see and spot pieces that don’t fit, or ones that you thought fit in the moment but now stand out glaringly, or find long, beautiful trains of pieces where everything went right for a very long time before falling apart, but they’re all still stuck where they are. You don’t even get a picture to model the puzzle after; if you’re extremely lucky, someone might tell you a vague approximation of what it should look like at the end, and send you on your way. All you can really do is keep laying down pieces and hope that, in the end, you can look back on something that’s mostly coherent.

But anyways.

It’s ironic how often Vax thought of Syngorn as a cage. When he was younger, he’d think of he and his sister as birds, beautiful and wild, stolen from their home and forced into something small and sterile and ugly. Put out for show, then hidden away again when they got to be too noisy. There was no measuring the amount of anger and resentment Vax felt whenever he was caught engrossed in reading on traps and the mechanisms that make them work, and told to stop researching something so uncivil. The anger and resentment only grew each time he saw his sister, with her passion for animals and the outdoors, shot down each time she asked to go out and explore.

Syngorn, their father’s home in particular, had been a prison, plain and simple. The twins were allowed to look out the bars of their cage, but never allowed to open it. Never allowed to fly free.

* * *

 

“How big do you think the world is?” Vex had asked him one day, out of the blue. The pair had made a habit of sneaking off to each other’s rooms almost immediately after arriving in their father’s house. They’d sit together in comfortable near-silence at opposite ends of the bed to work on their studies, or drawing, or writing in the company of each other; anything they both had to do, they could do together, they reasoned.

“What? Why would I know that off the top of my head? Go get a map from the library downstairs or something.”

“No, it won’t have the answer I’m looking for. That’s all numbers. Numbers are arbitrary, they mean whatever some old-as-balls scholar decided they mean. How big the world is according to that guy is different from how big the world _feels_.”

“You want to know how big the world… _feels_ ,” Vax said slowly.

“Yep! Don’t you? I know you feel cooped up in here too, don’t bother lying to me. Don’t you want to know how big the world would feel if we could get all the way around to the other side? As far from here as possible?”

Vax didn’t ask her why he would know the answer if she didn’t. He didn’t make a comment about how his answer would be different from her answer which would be different from every single other person’s answer. Instead, he told her the truth.

“I don’t know. I’ve only ever been as far as you have, my sense of the world’s as big as yours.”

“You know, I’m going to take the title of older sibling from you if you don’t start knowing more.”

“What— that’s not something you get to _take_ from me!”

“It absolutely is! The older sibling is supposed to know more. Besides, we're twins. We're practically the same age anyways, so the older one is whoever best fits being an oldest sibling. If you don’t start living up to that then I’m taking over the mantle.” She put a hand to her forehead dramatically. “It’ll be a heavy burden to bear, and I’m not sure _how_ I’ll get by, but I’m sure I can handle being better than you at everything with grace.”

“...Vex’ahlia, I am almost entirely certain that’s not how that works.” Vax couldn’t help but let a smile creep up onto his face.

“See? There you go, getting things wrong again. This is why I’m the older sibling, I know what I’m talking about. People need to know who to trust!” He swatted her leg with the back of his book, but let himself laugh. In an unfamiliar bed, in a room he didn’t like, in a city he despised, he let himself laugh and hear Vex laugh. He let the weight of their situation ease itself off of his heart, if only for a few moments. He let himself imagine how big the world could possibly feel, how it would feel to someone who’d traveled all of it.

As their laughter subsided, the twins were left again in a comfortable quiet. The quiet of being together with someone you love dearly, when words aren’t necessary. They let themselves bask in a moment of warmth, of hope. Of optimism for a future they could well and truly love.

It was Vex that broke the silence first. “Do you think we’ll ever get to find out how big the world feels?”

And Vax told her the truth.

“I hope so. I sincerely do.”

* * *

 

A prison, a cell, an island so isolated that to cry for help was to be met only by the cries of other prisoners or the mocking of wardens.

A bird cage.

Vax laughs to himself, and holds up one inky black raven feather between his fingers. It catches on the breeze and he lets it go, watches it sail off the edge of Whitestone Castle’s roof and over the city. He has to admit, it’s beautiful like this, lit up by the sun just about to sink down behind the castle. A chill will set in soon, but the roof is warm for now, and he basks in the final few minutes of light.

“What are you laughing about?” Vex breaks the silence from next to him. She’s looking out over the city as well, fingers idly toying with the bristles of the broom in her lap.

“It’s nothing.”

“It is _not_ nothing, save your mysterious dramatic bullshit for Keyleth. What is it?”

Well, Vex has him there. He takes a long breath, then smiles at her.

“Vex, how big does the world feel?”

Her brows come together in confusion, then her eyes widen, and she looks at a loss for words for just a moment, two moments—

“Honestly, brother, I thought it’d feel larger than this. Perhaps it’s all the teleporting.” She snaps herself out of the look with an easy grin, large and warm and relieved. It’s the grin of a person who knows deep in their heart they are truly free.

It’s a beautiful sight that he can’t help but mirror.

“Well, if all of this isn’t big enough for you, we do always have other planes to poke our heads into. Freddy tells me the Nine Hells are _lovely_ this time of year. We could have our run of just about anywhere, at this point.”

She laughs loudly. He laughs with her, and their laughter bounces off of each other until they’re both lying on the roof of Whitestone Castle, breathless with laughter over absolutely nothing; that much joy can only ever be expressed with loud, careless laughter. Vax lets himself let go of hindsight, of ruminating on mistakes. He lets himself simply experience happiness in its purest form, leaned up against his sister, wings behind him and an entire world stretching out ahead.

They’re wild birds, the pair of them. Resplendent and unstoppable. A bird cage was never going to hold them for long.


End file.
